King
Henry I(1068-1135)Born: September 1068 at Selby, Yorkshire West
Riding
King of England
Duke of Normandy
Died: 1st December 1135 at St. Denis-le-Fermont, Gisors, Normandy

Henry was
the youngest son of William the Conqueror and his only child born in
England. He came into the World at Selby, in Yorkshire, while Queen Matilda
was accompanying her husband on his expedition to subdue the North. Henry
was always his mother’s favourite and, though his father held a life
interest, he inherited all her English states upon her death in 1083.

As a boy, Henry received an excellent education at Abingdon
Abbey in Berkshire. Though a native speaker of Norman-French, as
well as learning the usual Latin, he was taught to read and write in
English. He also studied English law, possibly with a view to entering the
Church, like so many other younger sons. Henry had a particular interest in
natural history and, being far in advance of the times, eventually collected
together the first zoo in the country, at his palace in Woodstock (Oxfordshire).
His wide-ranging knowledge earned him the epithet of ‘Beauclerc’ meaning
‘Fine Scholar’, a name of which he was extremely proud. In later years,
he even declared that ‘an unlettered King was but a crowned ass.’

Knighted by his father at Whitsun 1086, Henry became one
of the barons who suffered from divided loyalties after the latter’s death
the next year. The Conqueror left Normandy to his eldest son, Robert
Curthose, and England to his second son, William Rufus. For nine years, this
resulted in many disputes in which men like Henry, with lands in both
realms, were obliged to take sides with one overlord while unintentionally
antagonizing the other. Eventually, however, Robert renounced Normandy and
set off on crusade, leaving Henry and the other barons to serve the monarch
of a united kingdom. He was thus attending his brother, William, in the New
Forest when he was accidentally (or otherwise) shot dead whilst out hunting
on 2nd August 1100. Recognising the need for quick actions, the young prince
left his brother’s body on the forest floor and rode straight for
Winchester to secure both the treasury and his election as King by a small
band of available councilors. He then left for Westminster where Bishop
Maurice of crowned him in the Abbey, four days later.

Henry promised to return to the ways of his father and
his first act as king was to restore the exiled St. Anselm to the
Archdiocese of Canterbury. He then began his search for a suitable wife and
quickly decided Princess Edith (later renamed Matilda), the eldest daughter
of King Malcolm Canmore of Scots. Her mother was St Margaret, the
grandaughter of the penultimate Saxon King of England, Edmund Ironside. So
their children united the blood lines of both the old and new ruling houses.

Anselm’s return was not without controversy and the
monarch and prelate soon clashed over the question of lay investiture of
ecclesiastical estates. Believing he held his estates from the Pope, for
years, the Archbishop refused to do homage for them to King Henry, until the
frustrated monarch finally forced him to flee into exile once more. The
King's sister, the Countess of Blois, eventually suggested a compromise in
1107, by which the bishops paid homage for their lands in return for Henry
allowing clerical investiture.

King Henry’s elder brother, Robert, had returned from
the Crusade in 1100, but proved such an ineffectual ruler in Normandy that
the barons revolted against him and asked Henry, a wise monarch and a
skilled diplomat, to take his place. The King crossed the Channel to aid
their struggle and Duke Robert was prisoner at Tinchebrai. Disquiet
continued to harass Henry’s rule in Normandy over the next few years, and
this was not helped by war with France. However, in 1109, his foreign policy
was triumphant in arranging the betrothal of his only legitimate daughter, Matilda,
to the powerful German Emperor, Henry V. They were married five years later.

Despite his numerous bastard progeny, King Henry had only
one other legitimate child, his heir, Prince William, a boisterous young man
whom the monarch completely idolized. Tragically, in 1120, the prince was
needlessly drowned - along with many of his generation at court - while
making a return trip from Normandy in the ‘White Ship’ which ran aground
and sank. It is said that Henry never smiled again. His first wife having
died in 1118, Henry took a second, Adeliza of Louvain, in 1122. But, despite
the lady being many years his junior, the marriage remained childless. So,
four years later, while staying for Christmas at Windsor
Castle, the King designated as his successor, his widowed daughter,
the Empress Matilda; and all the barons swore to uphold her rights after his
death. The following May, Henry also found his daughter a new husband, in
the person of Geoffrey, the rather young heir to the County of Anjou.

Henry found it expedient to spent an equal amount of time
in both his realms but, on 1st August 1135, he left England for the last
time. An eclipse the next day was seen as a bad omen and by December, the
King was dead. He apparently had a great love of lampreys (eels), despite
their disagreeing with him intensely. He had been ordered not to eat them by
his physician, but, at his hunting lodge at St Denis-le-Fermont, near Gisors,
the monarch decided he fancied some for supper. A severe case of ptomaine
poisoning ensued, of which gluttonous King Henry died.

Several Norman monasteries wanted Henry’s body buried
within their walls, but it was mummified for transportation back to England
and only his bowels, brains, heart, eyes & tongue were interred at Rouen
Cathedral. As he had wished, King Henry was laid to rest before the high
altar of Reading Abbey,
at the time, an incomplete Cluniac house he had founded in 1121. The
Dissolution of the Monasteries was severe at Reading and little survives of
its walls, let alone any trace of the effigial monument that once marked the
Royal grave. Even the King’s vault, below St. Joseph’s School, was
broken into in the hope of finding his ‘silver coffin’, and his bones
scattered in anger when it was found it be a myth. A large Celtic Cross to
his memory now stands on the site of the old west front.